Texans’ C.J. Stroud has cemented status as superstar QB — and that opens up a world of possibilities

Ben Arthur

AFC South Reporter

You can hear it in Zaire Franklin’s voice. 

That one conversion still drives him crazy. 

His Colts were hosting the Texans in Week 18, a de facto playoff game with a postseason berth on the line. It was the fourth quarter, a second-and-14 with 9:43 left. Houston ball. 

That’s when rookie sensation C.J. Stroud dropped back, stepped up, rolled to his left and back to his right to elude the pass rush. Then he fired a pass off his back foot, with his body drifting backward. A diving Nico Collins made the scramble-drill catch for a first down. 

Franklin made eye contact with Texans running back Devin Singletary, whom he was covering on the play. 

Singletary shrugged. 

“‘That’s C.J.,'” he told Franklin, who recalled the story on his podcast “The Trenches.” “That just let me know like he be doing s— like that all the time.”  

Stroud has made the incredible look routine. It’s why he’s already considered great, despite being a rookie. But we can no longer say he’s on track to becoming a superstar. The track has ended. That status was emphatically stamped when he guided the Texans to a 45-14 wild-card rout of the Browns. 

Not only did he dazzle in his playoff debut — a 76.1% completion rate, 276 passing yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions — but he humiliated the league’s No. 1 defense in the process. 

Stroud has made a case for the greatest rookie quarterback season ever. It’s becoming futile to argue against it. 

C.J. Stroud having the best rookie season ever?

The former Ohio State star joined Joe Montana and Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks in the past 50 years to lead the NFL in pass yards per game and touchdown-interception ratio. Of the five rookie quarterbacks in NFL history to throw for more than 4,000 yards — Jameis Winston, Cam Newton, Andrew Luck and Justin Herbert are the others — Stroud is the only one to have won a playoff game. 

And he did so in…

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Publish date : 2024-01-17 20:04:11

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